Velez Family of Venado and Charcas, SLP

Velez Family of Venado and Charcas, SLP

Towards the end of May in 1794 Maria Roberta Velis was born in the prosperous mining community of Charcas, in the northern tip of the state of San Luis Potosi.

San Luis Potosi was on at least two major historical routes. The Aztecs most probably passed this way en route south from what is now the Mid-Western United States in search of their promised-land, Tenochctitlan, modern day Mexico City.

Hundreds of years later the Spanish reversed the route, expanding northwards out of the Valley of Mexico into San Luis Potosi, and Zacatecas to it’s immediate northwest.

Santa Maria de las Charcas was named after the colonial capital of Upper Peru, modern-day Bolivia, because of the wealth of its South American namesake.San Luis Potosi was named after the mine of Potosi, also in present-day Bolivia.

Maria Roberta Velis’s parents were born in nearby Mazatepec. Mazatepec is a Nahautl name meaning Deer Hill. Today Mazatepec is known by its Spanish language equivalent,Venado.

Venado was founded by a group of Tlaxcaltecans around 1580. As the closest allies of the Spanish, the Tlaxcaltecos were exempt from paying taxes and lived in a private community off limits to other Indians, as well as to Europeans. The Tlaxcaltecans murdered, or enslaved the native Guachichil peoples who had lived in the area for centuries.

Maria Roberta’s parents were born in Venado: Geronimo Jospeh Velis Sanches on September 30th of 1768, and Maria Gertrudis Samorano shortly thereafter.

Geronimo’s parents were also born in Venado: his dad, Francisco Xavier Velis Rodriguez on October 4th, 1744, and his mom, Paula Dolores Sanches de la Cruz, shortly thereafter.

Francisco’s parents, Francisco Xavier Velis and Faustina Francisca Rodrigues were married on Novermber 23rd, 1731 in Venado, and were probably born there at the dawn of that century.

There was always a great deal of trade between thirsty Charcas, and the wine producing area of Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila.

Perhaps this commerce drew Maria Roberta Velis to Parras where she married Jose Ascencion Ramirez on September 8,1829. Jose Ascension was born almost exactly two years after his slightly older bride, in early May 1796.

Their son, Jose Maria de la Assumpcion Ramirez Velis was born on August 18, 1830 in Parras.

Mateo wed Maria Silvestra Romo who moved down to Parras from the small town of Rio Nuevo, Coahuila to the immediate north.

Their son, our great-grandfather, Victoriano Ramirez Romo, was born in 1876 in Brownsville, Texas, but baptized back home near his other’s birthplace in Coahuila the following year.

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